40% of Global Population Does Not Receive Education in a Language They Understand: UNESCO

Forty per cent of the global population does not receive education in a language they speak or understand, according to UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) team. Despite countries’ growing understanding of the role of home language, policy acceptance remains limited. Implementation challenges include limited capacity of teachers to use home languages, unavailability of materials in home languages, and community opposition, it said.

In some low- and middle-income countries, the figure rises to 90 per cent. Noting that more than 250 million learners are affected, GEM officials urged nations to adopt multilingual education policies and practices to establish an education system that meets the needs of all students.

The team responsible for the report, titled “Languages ​​matter: Global guidance on multilingual education”, found that with the rise in migration, linguistic diversity is increasingly being recognised as a global phenomenon. Classrooms that accommodate students from different linguistic backgrounds are becoming more prevalent. Currently, more than 31 million displaced young persons face significant language-related barriers to accessing education.

The report was compiled on the 25th anniversary of International Mother Language Day, celebrating a quarter of a century of dedicated efforts to preserve and promote the use of mother tongues.

The report has been released at a time when India is actively working on the implementation of the new National Education Policy (NEP), which promotes multilingual education. The three-language policy in the education system has faced opposition from some states.

In an interview with PTI, a senior member of the GeM team said, “40 per cent of Global Population (people around the world) do not have access to education in a language they can speak and understand fluently. This percentage rises to 90 per cent in many low and middle-income countries. Over 250 million learners are affected.”

“The first thing to note is that in this decade, which has also been marked by the massive influence of technology in young people’s lives as well as the impact of Covid-19, learning levels in both reading and mathematics have declined sharply. But the next thing to note is that the impact on linguistically disadvantaged learners has been disproportionate.”

According to the team’s analysis, the gap between the two groups has increased by an average of 12 to 18 percentage points in reading and 10 to 15 percentage points in mathematics between 2010 and 2022. This suggests that students who do not speak the language of instruction at home, whether for historical reasons or due to migration and displacement, are at greater risk of losing out on learning.

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